Review
Genre and Mood
Metronomy’s Love Letters (Soulwax Remix) takes a bittersweet, sixties-flavoured pop song and turns it into a long-form piece of electronic disco. FACT, which premiered it, called it nearly seven minutes of neon disco-pop, and it is groovy, hypnotic and, by the end, genuinely euphoric, a remix that respects the song while dragging it firmly onto the dancefloor.
Song Summary
The original is a wistful tune about waiting for words from someone far away, built on organ, horns and soft backing vocals. Soulwax keep Joseph Mount’s vocal and the melody but rebuild everything around it: a precise, machine-tight groove, a bassline that does the heavy lifting and their trademark sense of tension and release. Nialler9 described it as a dancefloor rework that puts its effort into the bassline and turns the song into a disco-funk jam. The memorable detail is how long they make you wait for the hook, which turns its arrival into a small explosion.
Musical Breakdown
At nearly six and a half minutes, the remix moves in long, carefully staged chapters.
Intro
A crisp drum pattern and a pulsing synth bass lay down a clean, metronomic groove, with hints of the melody flickering in the background.
Build-up
Synth lines begin to spiral and percussion fills in the gaps, the track slowly winding itself tighter.
Verse 1
Mount’s voice appears, cool and slightly detached against the glossy machinery, the song’s melancholy still intact.
Chorus
The Love Letters hook lands over the full groove, suddenly sounding less like a lament and more like a celebration.
Bridge
Soulwax strip the arrangement back to bass and drums, a tense, minimal passage built purely for the floor.
Climax
All the synth layers come rushing back with the vocal hook on top, the remix’s big, euphoric peak.
Outro
The groove keeps ticking as the layers fade, a DJ-friendly tail that lets the energy settle gently.
Concepts in Focus
This is a remix in the full sense: Soulwax keep the vocal and the melody and replace almost everything else. The organ, horns and close backing voices of Metronomy’s original give way to machine rhythm, and the song’s form is stretched from a pop single into a slow-building club piece. Electronic Rumors noted an EBM quality, the hard, sequenced feel of 1980s electronic body music, that never cancels out the original’s soulfulness.
The weight of the remix sits in its bassline. Where the original lets the melody lead, here the low end carries the groove and much of the hook, the way it does in disco and funk. Listen to how the bass keeps the track moving through the long stretches before the vocal returns, and how the hook feels bigger when it finally lands on top of it.
Artistic Context
Metronomy is the project of English songwriter and producer Joseph Mount. Love Letters is the title track of the band’s fourth album, released on 10 March 2014 by Because Music, a rawer record than its predecessors that traded breezy synth pop for psych-rock and soul influences, produced by Mount with Ash Workman; its original video was directed by Michel Gondry. Soulwax, the Belgian band and production collective from Ghent built around the brothers Stephen and David Dewaele, who also DJ as 2manydjs, are among the most celebrated remixers in electronic music.
Impact and Reception
The album reached number seven in the UK, Metronomy’s highest chart placing, and the remix became a favourite in DJ sets and year-end lists: Nialler9 ranked it fourth among the remixes of 2014 and Gigwise sixth. It was also pressed on a limited Record Store Day 12-inch with the original on the other side. It sits on this playground as a masterclass in patience and payoff. Give it the full six minutes, ideally loud, and wait for the hook to hit.
